Laurelines

Atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere: why I love toned paper

 

Yesterday, I posted on instagram a sketch I made of a still life in our new/old house on that cold, rainy afternoon. I made this on a Stillman and Birn gray Nova sketchbook, using colored pencils and other assorted materials.

This sketch took me right back to another interior still life I made at the house of dear friends four years ago at just this time of year. Atmosphere!

 

These started me looking back at the many drawings and sketches and some paintings I've made on toned paper for many years. 

Gray and tan paper automatically provide a lovely mid tone to give lines and colors a soaring start in life. This has many advantages. For a traveler like me, who takes only a carryon suitcase even on long international trips, I can pack a few pens, crayons, pencils and still have the range and flexibility I want.

Crucially for me, this paper guarantees the kind of atmospheric work I strive for.  And since I love to travel to, shall we say, atmospheric places like Norway, Wales, and Iceland, quite often in atmospheric seasons like winter, it is perfect for the task.

I have used three kinds of toned paper over the years: kraft paper, pastel paper (very rarely), and both Strathmore and Stillman and Birn toned paper in sketchbooks.

When I went to Alaska for an art residency a few years ago, I took along some high quality kraft paper to use for landscape studies. The ability to make atmospheric drawings with an economy of means was critical. Here are two of many from that project:

Toned paper has traditionally been used for pastel drawings/paintings. I'm not a pastelist, but I have used it occasionally, for my own purpose. Here I've used watercolor on pastel paper. The toothed softness of the paper gives the watercolors a texture boost and the bright colors against the gray/tan paper come to life.

Finally, I have so many of the above-mentioned atmospheric travel sketches to show you that I'll have to sit on my hands and just pick a few. Before there was Stillman and Birns toned sketchbooks, there were Strathmore ones and I used them plenty. Below are examples from both brands.

If you've seen this blog before, you've seen scores of my cold weather outdoor atmospherics on toned paper, so I won't repeat them, but here's a link to work from a recent December trip to Norway.

 

Atmospheric indoor scene at a Norwegian café in December:

Woman waiting at the Vienna train station on another chilly December day:

Blue jellyfish washed ashore in Abersoch, Wales. I adored how the cool colors and degrees of opacity behaved on the warmish gray Stillman and Birn paper!

New Year's Eve warmth and light in our seaside cottage on Whitesands Bay, Pembrokeshire, two years ago:

Hot chocolate helped ward off the cold at an outdoor market in Vancouver a while back in a Strathmore sketchbook:

I'm now sitting on my hands. Enough atmospherics! I do have other uses for toned paper, particularly in the making of expressive drawings and museum drawings!  Let that be a story for another day.  

Janus, the god of beginnings: my 2020 version

My birthday is very close to New Year's Day, so I am in the habit this time of year, like the god Janus, of looking both ways, to the past/the old year and looking ahead to the new. I am a frequenter of liminal states and this time of year is a such a state for most of us.

These sketches from my Norway trip were made on my December trip to that sublime wintry country. They are from my recent past, but I have them in the studio now, as sources for paintings I've begun and will continue working on these next weeks.

This time of year in those far northern climes, the light is blue. For me, the light is not at all depressing, but celestial, ethereal, magical. It is everywhere and it changes everything.

 

In a lecture on polar explorers, I sat and drew. Their stories were deep, often disturbing, sometimes, of course, triumphant. These men took themselves to the far limits of human coping... and sometimes they couldn't. Here we learned about Fridtof Nansen, Roald Admundsen, Hjalmar Johansen

 

 

More blue light, inside and out. My wonderful husband reads by the light of the sky and fjord and a small Christmas star.

Fellow passenger, reading.

And now, speaking of thresholds, I want to tell you that David and I will be moving this year from the house and gardens that we designed, built, lived in, and loved for 26 years. We are moving houses, but will stay in this area. It is exciting and anxiety-producing all at once!  I will tell more once I have more concrete things to tell.  I know this: in 2020, we will find our new happy home. It will be an adventure. I will have a new garden! I will share the story and images with you.

  May Janus, the god of beginnings, thresholds, and transitions, watch over us...and you.

Starting the New Year in Wales, a glorious beginning

There's a lot of story to tell, too much to try to share tonight. 

But before I post a few sketches, I will share quickly some memories: my exhilarating polar swim in the Irish Sea on New Year's Day; seeing the Quadrantid Meteor showers on my birthday night while wrapped in many layers and sitting on the front lawn of our cottage on Whitesands Bay; with the help of a traveling professional astronomer on the same birthday night, seeing nebulae, a galaxy, the Milky Way in bright form, many constellations, the fuzzy green comet 46P/Wirtanen; at Evensong of the first Sunday of Christmas at St Davids Cathedral sitting in the choir stalls with choir and clergy, hearing hymns and the liturgy in both Welsh and English.

I walked and walked and walked and walked some more until my heart was overspilling.  My husband and I slept deeply in that quiet, safe, numinous place. 

It's been another rough re-entry to real life (like the one from Norway last year) but I have several paintings going, a few from before the trip, but several newly started ones, all inspired by Wales. This circular and multi-pronged approach has me nudging each one along until I finish one, then another, then two more, etc. I'm happy in the studio.

So, sketches, just a few. I spent more time being, being outside, walking, resting, being with my husband, taking it all in.

Looking out over the Irish Sea to Ramsey Island and beyond, from the warmth of our cottage by the sea. This is white marker and pencil on brown paper. In real life, the sketch goes across the gutter of the sketchbook, making a double spread. I will add the other side later. 

Brush pen sketch made on site at Whitesands Bay, color added later.  These rocks and the ones below are old friends. They figured in the 12' long concertina sketchbook I made in May 2017, part of my Caledonian Orogeny project!

The first thing I bought on New Year's Eve day were two votive candles and holders. With these and the wood fire burning in our cottage living room, we had light and warmth.

After the polar swim on New Year's Day, I was cold and starving, so David and I repaired to our favorite St Davids café at Oriel y Parc and had lunch. I drew the family at the next table.

Sketch of St Davids Head, made standing on Whitesands Beach in the cold and wind. This and the one above are roughly and quickly drawn (the cold! the wind!), with color added later.

I'll be staying at home more this year, finishing paintings, being with family and friends, walking and trying to get more sleep! Wales spoiled me in that way and in so many others.

A tardy, but very Happy New Year's greeting to you!

80° North, anyone? Art supplies for the Land of the Midnight Sun!

 

That's where we'll be the first part our trip!  Far, far, far northern Norway, off the mainland. I am going to try to get some sort of memento with that latitude engraved on it! I'm a north-going spirit, that's for sure. 

This being such a once-in-a-lifetime trip, I vow to document it fully in writing and sketches, in addition to the separate group of drawings I'll do for my Caledonian Orogeny project.

But what supplies to take with me?? I travel only with a carryon and that has to contain clothes for winter weather (still there in May and early June in Svalbard) as well as for cool spring days, which I hope we will find in the other parts of Norway we are going to. Yikes!

Wakeful at 2am today (and you can understand why!), I looked at past sketches of similar atmospheric situations. Here are my tentative choices. If you have any suggestions, by the way, please do make them!

I know you've seen most of these before, but bear with me. I have to think.;D

1. Caran d'Ache watercolor crayons: I use these often. Here are some examples from  the past:

Iceland, Budir Bay

More Iceland. Here there's a wash of Daniel Smith Lunar Black with the crayons. I'll take that and Lunar Blue and those will be my only watercolors. Right? I can add more washes later. if I want to.

 

Mt Hood, Oregon. Unlike my previous trips to Norway, which all took place in the Arctic Twilight, this trip will be, as I mentioned, under the Midnight Sun!

    2. Pentel pocket brush pen. These are practically extensions of my hands. I use them everywhere.

In Bergen, Norway, with white gel pen and watercolor wash

 

In E.Lansing, Michigan, with watercolor crayons! Two for the price of one!

    3. Inktense pencils? When you must have bursts of juicy color!

Don't you love how a mere spritz of water makes inktense sketches ebullient!

Inktense pencils at Carn Llidi, Wales. Speaking of atmospheric, as we were:

     4. Cretacolor Oil pencils in Nero. I have to have these for regular drawing, right?  With these, you can be both gestural and precise:

And I'll need these for my Caledonian Orogeny drawing, of course;

    5. Sketchbooks: I'll have a couple of custom handmade concertina sketchbooks for the rock drawings and then two Stillman & Birn softcover 8 x10s, one in gray, one in white.

    6. Blue and red colored pencils, not watercolor ones. Oh, let's add orange and green, too. I just like to draw with these and they come in handy if you want quick, dry color.

 

 Oh, I've given myself a headache now.

I'm serious... if you have any suggestions, any new products you like for travel sketches, or old favorites of yours (not watercolors, though, or fountain pens for this trip, unfortunately,) I'd love to have them!

Takk!

2017 into 2018: The straight way was lost

 

In the middle of the journey of my life,

I came to myself in a dark wood

And the straight way was lost.

Adapted from a translation of Dante's "Inferno,"  Canto I.

  

Not exactly lost, and the chronology is off, but it's just that a new, indirect, and wavy way seems to be taking over here. I believe it comes from that life force, the c'hi, that I sense so palpably in my numinous places, and which inspires me in my art life.

Well, I can't be in my numinous places (Norway, Wales, Iceland, Scotland, etc) every minute of the day, so I'm figuring out how to find charged experiences here, at home, in my daily life. And now, at the beginning of a new year,  I've started following this barely-intuited way, this wavy, meandering way, in my journal/sketchbook.

I feel a huge burden of guilt over unfinished paintings from the past year and more and this guilt has made it ever harder to return to that unfinished work. So, I'm going back, via this new way, to basics and to joy. 

The way appeared one very cold day on my late afternoon walk. Here is what I saw: 

  

I read the message in these lines and now I draw, paint, make marks, collecting my own images, from what I see around me, not just anything my eye happens upon, but scenes and objects that seem charged with a special energy, for whatever reason... and record them in my journal, to find out who... and where... I am.  Again.

I'm not making huge pronouncements or plans for now, just going step by wavy step. And I'm developing an awareness for presence of the c'hi in, say, a plate of apples.

It's a happy life.

 

Pink hyacinth in pot wrapped in pink foil, mixed media on toned paper:

Bowl of nuts with nutcracker, mixed media on toned paper:

Angel drawing after Melozzo da Forli, mixed media on toned paper:

Apples and tangerines on blue plate, mixed media on toned paper:

My new challenge is to be open to charged places and objects and settings near to home. Then, when I get back to Norway this May, I'll be more than ready to receive it!

Happy New Year! May we be filled with energy and joy.

Only Connect: My Trip to North Wales

Connections are surfacing everywhere in my life this phase. Without going into a long explanation right now on that topic, (but I will soon!), let me share some images from my two weeks on the Lleyn Peninsula and on Anglesey, two very different, but equally magnificent places. 

Walking along the sandy beach on Abersoch Bay, I saw several luminous blue mounds and wondered what they were. They were Velella jellyfish, washed up on shore, a phenomenon that has occurred on the various coastal regions of Wales often recently. Here I started with the Winsor & Newton tube gouache I took along and finished with crayon since the paint took so long to dry.

 Tea time at the beautiful house and gardens Plas yn Rhiw on the Lleyn Peninsula was a great treat. My husband and I were able to sit on the terrace and have our tea, a rare occasion on this often blustery, rainy, chilly trip. Here I used watercolor crayon and Pentel brush pen on site, adding colored pencil green later at home.

Traveling light as I do, I had pared down my paint and crayon palettes to just a few colors, one of which was not green, so I used my blues and yellows to make this sketch of the Italianate garden on the grounds of the house we stayed in at Abersoch. I ended up being glad I had no green; I like the retro Technicolor effect I got from those limited colors.

On Anglesey, at the café of the art gallery Oriel ynys Môn, I had for lunch, what else, Welsh Rarebit. It was warm and comforting on another one of those chilly, blustery days. Again, here I used Pentel pocket brush pen, watercolor crayon, and a blue colored pencil.  And you can't tell this from the sketch, but that was wonderful Welsh sparkling water in the small glass.

On the many, many walks I took on Anglesey, taking advantage of the lulls in rain and high wind, I often started by walking down a magical holloway, or sunken lane, behind our house, leading to the Anglesey coast path. Here is one of the parade of venerable trees that line that old way:

I don't have landscape sketches per se, because I was concentrating on a different way of looking at land forms and that was the underlying reason for the trip. This has to do with the Caledonian Orogeny and it has to do with connections and you've read some about that here before.  Here's just a snippet of the 12' drawing I made this time of the rock outcrops I found on LLigwy Bay, rocks that are 450 million years old, give or take a few million.

The story is longer and so is the drawing and so is the time it would take to tell it. But it's an important story to me and I will be back soon!

2016 turns to 2017

 And so do we all. This year has been a fraught one, to say the least. We have had way more than one year's share of loss, despair, and dread. I know that many of us around the world are looking to the new year for some, for any, relief. May we find it.

On a personal, artistic level, however, this year has been one of the fullest ever, with trips and work deriving from my Places Project. I began to experiment with painting and drawing with found, organic materials. I have a long way to go and, I assume, lots of time to continue with this. Mud, paint made from rocks and soil, sand, charred twigs, berry juice were some of my means along this path.

The red earth of North Carolina, gathered here from Peregrine Farm, is highly pigmented and is a total joy to smear and brush on surfaces. Soil from my area makes paint in this deep red and in various other ochre, umber, and sienna hues.

 Rows of celosia flowers at Peregrine Farm, supported by white plastic mesh made for a striking subject. Mixed media : mud, acrylic, watercolor, found charcoal on toned paper:

Other studies and sketches from Peregrine Farm can be seen here and here:

 In Alaska, at my residency at Chulitna Lodge on magnificent Lake Clark, there was peaty soil and sand to dip into. I brought back some soil I ground and dried for use in my studio this year. I overestimated what I could do pursuing these means in a limited period of time, restricted to materials I could pack in my carryon! I need to be somewhere for an extended period, with lots of space to work and to store materials. I am working on just such a scenario for myself for 2017.

View of Copper Mountain from across Lake Clark. Mixed media: watercolor, sand, soil.

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 There were wild currants to squash and smear to add color to drawings:

This and other spreads and studies from Alaska can be seen here and   :

 

 

In coastal Pembrokeshire, the world was rich with beautiful mud and rocks that told stories 450 million years old. I was in ecstasy there and have just made plans to return for two weeks in May to continue those explorations.

Above, I paint and draw with sand and rocks and below I smear in my sketchbook mud from the source of sacred St. Non's well near St. Davids, with blackberry stain added for color.

Other paintings and studies from the 12' long accordion sketchbook

I used in Wales appear here.

I enjoyed another year of working with Charleston Style and Design Magazine, producing illustrations that allowed me to stretch and play and that were such fun to do

 

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I led my second three-part drawing series at the Nasher Museum of Art in September and it was a lovely, successful experience, just as last year's was. It is a thrill to work with enthusiastic students from all ages and backgrounds. 

 

 

December trip sketches and thoughts

(Please click on images to see them in full.)

 

The days after our return from Bavaria and Austria raced by. I felt breathless trying to get everything ready for the holidays. But part of me is still there, in lively and friendly Munich, elegant Salzburg, and imposing, glittery Vienna. The sketches I made this time were idiosyncratic and totally self-directed. It was cold out and we were traveling with friends, so I didn't have, or didn't arrange for, many urban-type sketching opportunities.

I took a limited mix of art tools: big Pitt artist pens, a smattering of Inktense pencils, a couple of micro pens and a Pentel pocket brush pen. I wanted to add color on site, get it done! I  often take gray or brown toned paper sketchbooks when I travel to cold climates in the winter time and I did this again this time. The toned paper gives an atmospheric quality to what I draw that is just right for those cold places.

My first sketch of the trip was in Munich, at a little café in the Viktualienmarkt.  We were on a glühwein quest and we found a fun, spartan place to sit and celebrate the first night of our trip.

Another successful glühwein stop! This was the second night of our Munich adventure.

The wild boar mounted on the wall at Goerreshof restaurant in Munich took me back instantly to memories of our first trip to Sweden, to Gothenburg to see our daughter Cecelia, where I sketched another pig's head in the food market there:

Here's my Swedish pig from 2005:

And here's my Munich pig from 2016:

 

In tiny Frielassing, where we had to drop off our rental car, we had dinner at a family-run, cozy restaurant. I made this sketch in the darkish interior, using dry Inktense pencils. 

 

At the Naturhistoriches Museum in Vienna, I was compelled to sit and draw skeletons from the long- ago past. 

 

Leaving Vienna for Munich again and our flight home, I drew this lovely woman at the Hauptbahnhof very early in the morning.

 

 I admit that I have had mixed feelings about starting to write this post. My cheerful words and images seemed inappropriate at best. A few days after we returned home, 12 people were murdered in Berlin and 56 were injured at a Christmas market very like the ones we went to in Munich, Salzburg, and Vienna. I had, in fact, at first hesitated to return to Munich this year, after last year's terrorist events in Munich and other parts of Germany ...and elsewhere. In the end, I decided not to let fear guide our plans and so we went. We were lucky this time. Others, tragically, were not.

That we live in highly dangerous times is obvious to everyone. Hatred and violence manifest daily around the world. It is easy to feel hopeless and I often do. It is not a state of mind I can sustain and yet what is there to replace it with?

For my own comfort and with that stubborn human hope that, against all evidence and against all odds, there's a better world coming, I repeat to myself these words from the Buddhist Metta prayer, the prayer for lovingkindness:

May all beings everywhere be happy, be safe, and be free from suffering.

May all beings everywhere be at peace.

 

Love and peace to you.

 

Alaska, part two, sketches and studies continued

Here is the second and last batch of studies from Alaska. I wanted to post them before September completely sweeps me away with planning my drawing classes for the Nasher Museum of Art and pulling things together for David's and my trip to coastal Wales two days after the 3-part series ends!

I have some painting ideas growing out of my time in Alaska and evolving from my sketches and studies... and I need to get the rough lineaments of these down in the studio before I head for Wales. So, hurrying along I go.

For now, here are two more gestural mountain studies. The sky in Alaska was where most of the actual, visible energy of the place manifested. The mountain peaks held and exuded their own energy, of course,  but what was surprising in Alaska was that the water itself was pretty calm. This is not always the case with Lake Clark, but compared to the sea, the lake's drama is simply going to be more subdued in most cases. Somehow, this had not occurred to me before I went!

I had packed a Strathmore sketchbook filled with gray-toned paper, but I used it less often than I thought I would. That brown craft paper was so much sturdier!

The angular peakiness of the mountains became more and more apparent as I drew. My curving, swooping gestural style ceded to the reality of those chiseled shapes as the days went by.

Sitting on the deck of the bathhouse one late afternoon, I grabbed some pencils and sketched a view of the mountains, seen through the branches of an Alaskan spruce.

Oh, I had fun drawing with charred wood from our bonfire! Here are two more found charcoal sketches:

And a quick shot similar to the one I posted last time, of two sketchbook spreads, the pages of which won't fit on my scanner:

I'll be posting work made by the participants in my drawing series at the Nasher over the next three weeks. I had forgotten to take photos of the drawings last time and I won't make that mistake again. We are going to have a wonderful series and I want to share it with you!

Alaska, part one, sketches and studies, means and materials

Note: You do have to click on the thumbnails here to see the full pieces. They are too wide for this format.

 

Well, Alaska was humbling! And thrilling and unforgettable. I'm so grateful for the time I had there.  I wish it had been longer.  

Humbling for the obvious reasons of the place's grandeur and uniqueness, but on a work level, too,  because constricted packing space and travel exigencies naturally limited the kinds of materials I could take with me. The upside of that is that I made do with what I had... and that is a very Alaskan trait!

Here are samples of studies and sketches I made, direct and immediate responses to what I saw, in no particular order. 

At the last minute, I decided to throw in a pad of heavy craft paper and I'm very glad I did! It is so sturdy and, being toned, it provided instant atmospherics and drama.

 

The paper's brown tones seemed to bring out my hitherto completely unsuspected inner Maynard Dixon, a twentieth-century painter of the American west!

 The craft paper stood up well to the charcoal stubs I harvested from a fire pit, using them as drawing tools:

I brought loose sheets of heavyish watercolor paper and was able to make some studies with paint made from soil.I brought back soil, rocks, and found charcoal to continue these experiments at home.

I collected wild currants and smashed them and used their pulp to add color to this ink sketch of fireweed:

In a sketchbook made for me by a good friend especially for this trip, I turned to more colorful subjects:

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More to come of Alaska and its aftermath!